7 Tips for Choosing Wedding Favors

Wedding favors are small items, but lovely wedding gifts that the wedding couple leave for each guest at the wedding reception party. These gifts are usually set at each place setting and may be incorporated into the place setting as the name holder.

When getting ideas for wedding favors it is important to remember these 7 tips.

Tip #1 – Know your budget and stick to it. If you will be inviting 100 guests to your dinner reception and you only want to spend $100 on wedding favors you know that you need to look for wedding favors costing about $1 apiece. While most favors run in the $3-$5 range each, don’t be discouraged. One dollar per wedding favor can be done! There are tons of ideas out there. Purchase small gift bags that have been decorated and personalized as a place card. (You or a friend can do these by hand.) Then, large containers of items – beautiful shells, candies or potpourri can be used as centerpieces for the guests to take home a memento of your wedding celebration.

Tip #2 – Use the wedding favors as a way to set the wedding theme or colors. Small snowflake picture frames, ornaments, or photo coasters would be an elegant way to enhance a winter wedding.

Tip #3 – Whenever possible, incorporate the wedding favor as a cardholder for the place setting. If you have decided to assigned seating for your reception save yourself the time and expense of purchasing and arranging dozens of place cards and wedding favors. There are many wonderful favors that will serve double duty.

Tip #4 – Think outside of the box. A wedding favor is a gift, but there is no rule that states how it has to be presented. You can save so much time, energy and worry. (Your worry, but mostly your bridesmaids time and energy, as they would probably be assigned the daunting task of wrapping those hundreds of gifts!)

Tip #5 – Be aware of the current trends and fashions. Wrapping candies in a circle of netting material and tying it with a personalized ribbon with your names and wedding date on them is so 1990s. There is no reason to despair even if you are completely lost for ideas. There are so many resources you can tap into. You can search the Internet for ideas, join an online community of other people who are planning weddings and share ideas, or thumb through wedding magazines. If you can’t afford to buy them, go to your local library and browse through the current and past issues for ideas.

Tip #6 – Use the newest technology to really make an impression on your guests. You have probably been to a wedding where disposable 35mm cameras are left on the table for guests to use, but are you aware that they make disposable camcorders now? Each guest could record their wedding wishes to you and take about 20 minutes of footage. The cameras are returned to the store where you purchased them and a DVD is made of each camera’s contents.

Tip #7 – Enjoy the entire experience, remember this is supposed to be fun! If the idea of finding wedding favors puts you over the edge then you are taking on more than you can handle. The secret to staying sane while planning a wedding is to enjoy every stage – even the difficult ones. Planning and pulling off a large ceremony and party does take quite a bit of organization and a huge sense of humor. If you are acting as your own wedding planner try to make each decision and task as joyful and fun as possible. Yes, there will be stumbling blocks, but there is also a lot of festivity and amusement that goes along with planning a wedding. So, savor every moment.

Saving Money with Wedding Collections

Even in a jacked up doom and gloom economy, most Americans are spending over $20,000 for their wedding day. Of this amount over 46% goes to the cost of the wedding reception. And we’re not talking about the type of reception the rich and famous would have. Even modest receptions can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
However, it’s not just the wedding reception itself, but rather the little things that make up the reception. In fact, even if you decide to have your reception in your backyard, you may still end up paying a couple thousand dollars if you want decent wedding favors.
For this reason, you may want to consider getting some of your favors through wedding collections. What makes up wedding collections? Wedding collections contain different sets of wedding items at one low convenient price. The most common type of wedding collection will include the flower girl basket, the garter, the ring bearer pillow, and the wedding unity candle, some will contain even more items.
You can also select a wedding theme. Say for instance you want an Irish wedding. You could get the “Irish Affection” wedding collection. This collection features white and green items.
Another example can be seen in the “Midnight Rendezvous” wedding collection. Designed in black, the Midnight Rendezvous collection could be used for a variety of themes. One of them could be for those who want to commemorate celebrating a night wedding. The collection could also be used to help design a less conventional ‘Gothic’ wedding.
What about the couple that desires a more traditional wedding? Well, there’s “A Touch of Gold,” collection which features the more conventional colors of white and gold. There are also wedding collections where everything is designed in white or ivory. By using wedding collections and cheaper venues for your reception, you can have an elegant wedding without burning a hole in your wallet. And this is important, because as a newly married couple, that extra $20,000 is better served as a down payment for a new home.
www.firstavenueweddingfavors.com